Me, Myself, and I
by Zoey Overbeck
Summary: I'm back from doing nothing! Okay, so this is just one crazy dream Aelita has one night. Let's say she's not exactly in France anymore... and things get a little weirder. Well... this is why you should not give me tea.


AN: Too much tea does this to people... It addles the minds. Code Lyoko is owned by… eh, you know this stuff already.

**It's Just Me, Myself, and I (or Aelita's Dream)**

Aelita lay down on her bed, pulling up the red blankets to the top of her chest, listening to the soft pattering of the rain as it poured down, lightly hitting any surface it made contact with. She stared up at the ceiling as memories and thoughts rushed by, like a stream flowing to the ocean. The stones that were in the river of life were all the events that had happened, which had lead up to the current events, where she started her new life. The boulders that used to stand in her way were no more than pebbles in her life now. She had come to equal terms with Sissi and her group, and chose to live her life in her normal optimistic view than the darker pessimistic view. Everything seemed a little brighter when people looked at the world in a lighter view than a darker view. Aelita shifted under the covers, the pale moonlight slipping momentarily in her room through a break in the clouds before it was covered up again, sending the room back into darkness. The soft melody of the raindrops and the dark interior of the room soon lulled her into a deep sleep, where the dreams ruled and where anything could be possible in that realm. 

It seemed like a long time before she woke up again, but in reality, it was just a short period of time. When she did open her eyes, the first thing she noticed was that she was no longer in her dorm room anymore, instead finding herself in her old room in the cabin near the mountains, where she and her family had lived before her mother was taken away from her. She seemed to be on her old bed, and there was a blanket over her, as well as all of the things she had remembered from her room in the mountain cabin. It seemed like it was in the day, the sun shining through the cloudless sky to beam down on the green grass growing near the foot of the mountain, the mountain peaks touching the sky like no man-made item could. Something lightly hit her stomach, and she let out a soft groan as a natural reaction to the movement.

There was a small ruffling sound and something moved nearby her, causing Aelita to back up a little in fear. A young pink-haired head female poked out of the covers and rustled a bit, yawning lightly and curling up again. Recognizing the girl as herself when she was younger, Aelita tried to slide out of the bed and give her younger self some peace when her younger self subconsciously grabbed onto the hem of her shirt, preventing her from escaping without waking the younger version of herself. Aelita tried rubbing the back of her younger self's hand, to try to release the grip on her shirt, but to no avail. It was only after a few moments when her younger self awoke to bemusedly look at her teenage self, who was wearing a similar expression on her face as the two Aelitas looked at each other with unfeigned curiosity.

"Do you know what am I doing here?" the teenage one asked.  
"It's your dream, you tell me" the younger girl replied, releasing her hold on the teenage Aelita's shirt.  
"Well, I don't know about dreams" the elder replied.  
"Well, since you're here, you might as well hang out with your older version of yourself as well" the younger said, shrugging her shoulders.  
"… Older…?  
"Ooh, yeah! The grown up version of you is nearby! You just have to ask her to play though."  
"Okay, fine. What do you want to play?"  
"Well, I have some board games right here" the younger replied, a small pile of board games appearing on the end of the bed.  
"Yahtzee?" the teenage Aelita asked, looking at the top of the pile of board games.  
"YAHTZEE!" the younger exclaimed, falling backwards off the bed in her excitement.

The teenage Aelita panicked, and decided not to waste time on the obsolete question of "Are you alright". She gently picked her younger self up and set her against a wall on the bed, and picked out a game that had nothing to do with Yahtzee. It was a Chess board, and fairly new due to the condition it was in when the teenage Aelita pulled it out from the bottom of the pile.

"Chess?" the younger Aelita asked. "Why are we playing it?"  
"Because smart people play Chess" the teenage Aelita replied. "It's good for the brain, because it allows people to make decisions".  
"No Yaht-"  
"Please don't say that game name. They say bad things happen if you say that"  
"Says who?" the younger female asked.  
"So says the guy that played George in Scary Movie III. He yelled the name of the game board, and got up in his excitement. He hit his head on a shelf and was knocked unconscious." The teenage Aelita replied.  
"…Wow. I better not say Yahtzee, huh?" 

Immediately after she said that a glass item broke outside of their house, in a cabin that was close by. Almost instantly, there was an angry male voice yelling on who had broken his prized glass swan sculpture. Little Aelita immediately grabbed her blanket, and hid under it behind the teenage Aelita, cowering in terror on what she had accidentally done. Teenage Aelita, a little put off by the current situation on the accidental breaking of glass, gently stroked her younger self's hair, calming the younger girl and letting her slowly slip out of the cover and protection of her blanket once she deemed it was safe.

"Yeah, we better go with the Chess game, huh?"  
"Yup" the teenage Aelita said as she set up the Pawns and the Rooks first.  
"I'm going to help!" younger Aelita said as she put a Knight in the King's place.

The teenage Aelita smiled, and helped her younger self with the setting up of the Chess pieces, placing the Chess board between them as they sat on opposite ends of the bed. Younger Aelita, playing as the black pieces that were now set up on the board, pointed out that you could just say verbal commands, and the Chess pieces out automatically go to the square, if they were able to due to the rules of Chess. Since it was a dream, and anything could happen, the room faded out, and both of them were in a dark room with a single light fixture above them.

"E3 Pawn to E4" the teenage Aelita commanded, and the white Pawn slid on the wooden surface of the board to the specified location.

"B7 Pawn to B5" younger Aelita countered.  
"D1 Queen to H5, checkmate" teenage Aelita said, after analyzing the board.  
"Aww, you cheated…" younger Aelita said as she set up the board again for another game of Chess, this time she was not willing to lose to an teenage version of herself.  
"Actually, the 2-move KO strategy is perfectly legal in the game" teenage Aelita said, readying herself for another game.

Both of them enjoyed each other's company, and they played round after round, sometimes the younger version beating the teenage Aelita, sometimes the other way around, or sometimes the games ending in stalemates, where neither side could get the advantage to beat the other. The teenage Aelita held out her hand to the board, and her Queen slid down the board to corner her younger self's King, while being safely far away so that her younger self's King would not be able to capture her Queen.

"It's weird you know, how you guys are like Chess pieces in the eternal game of Lyoko…" her younger self said, moving her King away from the Queen.

"How so" the teenage Aelita asked, sliding her Rook near the King to corner it once more. "Check" was all she said, thinking about how her younger self knew about Lyoko, then reminding herself that she was a figment created by the stimulation of her mind.  
"You're right, I am no more than a mental stimulation projected by this dream. However, you told me that yourself, and you told me how XANA really is. I mean, you are like the Queen, or the King, for the matter, if you don't count daddy as the King and put yourself as Queen. You're basically the single most important person in the realm of Lyoko, saving the world all depends on you" she said, frowning and moving her King once again.

"Well… thanks, I guess…" the teenage Aelita said, moving her Bishop back several spaces.  
"I mean, XANA's the King for the dark pieces… and you can count William as his Queen, I guess. He is instrumental in capturing the Queen… I mean King and ending the game, that is, if he still is in the game." The younger Aelita said, using her Knight to capture one of her Rooks.  
"I'm like the Queen or the King in some matters, depending on the situation. Jeremie is like the Queen or Bishop, correct" the teenage Aelita said, moving her King away from the black colored Knight.  
"Your thinking is like mine, as we are of equal minds. If you think something is incorrect, then I think it is incorrect as well. However, I can affirm your previous statement. I mean, Odd and Ulrich are like Knights, and Yumi is like a Rook or Bishop. It's that simple" she said, moving the Knight away from the other's Pawn.

"So, I was like the King… I take that as a little insult. I mean, I can only do so little..." the teenager said, moving another piece away from a particularly threatening piece.

"However, you did become like a Queen later in your life, so I guess you're a … Quing?"  
"Ah, that's much better… Checkmate" the teenage Aelita said, ending the game by moving her other Bishop to keep the black colored King pinned on one square of the board.  
"… and just like that, the lighter forces beat back the darker forces" Aelita heard another say.

Aelita looked up to see an older version of herself, the long pink hair meticulously done and tied up in a ponytail. The older version of the teenage Aelita smiled and stroked the younger Aelita's hair, much like the teenage version of herself had done when the younger had broken a glass item. The teenage Aelita looked uncertain of the new apparition, but understood what she had meant, with every battle on Lyoko, every battle against XANA had been nothing more than a game of Chess. The monsters were nothing more than variants of the pieces, whether it was  
Pawns, Bishops, Knights, or Rooks.

"Life can be nothing more than a game, but it can also be something more" the older version of Aelita said, untying her hair and letting it flow on her shoulders like water tumbling onto rocks in a waterfall.  
"Life is as fickle as a fire. Death is sure as sorrow" the teenage Aelita countered.  
"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" the older Aelita said, amusedly looking at her teenage self while quoting a famous verse.  
"Thanks, but I'll take a car instead" the youngest said, giggling madly.

Both the teenager version and the older version of Aelita laughed, while the older Aelita gently picked up the youngest. The teenage Aelita said something, but the older Aelita whispered something to her, which the teenage Aelita was sure it had been "Goodbye", but was not sure. The scene then faded out before the teenage Aelita could say something, the vision blurring like a memory being forgotten over time. Just before the dream completely faded away, Aelita heard a voice say "We'll meet again soon, don't you worry!", but thought it was a figment of her imagination.

Aelita's eyes soon opened wide, and she quickly sat up in bed, breathing heavily like she had performed a marathon. She wiped the sweat that had formed on her forehead, and left the room, going to the bathroom to wash it off before going to back into bed again to enjoy her Sunday. Just as she closed the door, she heard two voices arguing in her room, but she laughed and walked off, pondering on the dream and what it meant.

**It's just a dream…**

"Ha! Checkmate!" the younger apparition of Aelita said, appearing suddenly on the floor as a barely opaque figure, moving her white Queen triumphantly across the board.  
"But… but… but… That's possibly not legal!" the older apparition practically shouted in disbelief, appearing on the other side of the almost transparent chessboard on the floor.  
"Oh, yes it is! See! It's even in the chess book as the fastest checkmate! I win! I win! I win!" The younger Aelita shouted as she whooped and hollered, thankfully her voice not being heard except by the person who the apparitions are of.

The older version of Aelita just stared at the board and then back again at the little girl, and shook her head in disbelief that she did not see that coming. The little apparition smiled, and she, along with the other apparition, disappeared just as Aelita came into the room, catching a glance at the two, quirking her eyebrow and muttering to herself that it was just her imagination.

…**Or was it?**

AN: Well, I did toss in the appearance of Older Aelita at the end. Anyone want a sequel? If so, you can just PM me to tell me what you want. The glass swan is a reference to one of my other stories "L'amour Toujours", the Easter Special chapter. I'm a little rusty on Chess, so please forgive me if I said some locations for pieces wrong in terms of their squares (B7, E2, etc.)


End file.
